


the house that lies in-between

by Grand_Phoenix



Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [43]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Astral Projection, Dark, Existentialism, Headcanon, Hopeful Ending, In Media Res, Introspection, Male-Female Friendship, No Romance, One Shot, Psychological Drama, Self-Indulgent, because Blizzard never gave me the serotonin I wanted with them IN THE GAME PROPER, maybe? void only knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27417706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grand_Phoenix/pseuds/Grand_Phoenix
Summary: From one door leads to another. Through which way will you go? [Alleria, Illidan, and Sargeras, within the Seat of the Pantheon][Legion era, pre-BfA]
Relationships: Alleria Windrunner & Illidan Stormrage
Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [43]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/971712
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	the house that lies in-between

**Author's Note:**

> My Alleria-Illidan dream team might not be a viable thing in the future (depending on how canon goes) and an opportunity at them interacting a Missing Novel all on its own, but that's _my job_ to fill in, ahem, _the Void_. Look, if Illidan can make friends with _Velen_ of all people, a wielder of the Light, then surely he'd have no problem with a user of the Void, one of two progenitors of Fel. Just saying.
> 
> This is based off a headcanon that being subjected to Sargeras's visions gave Illidan the insight about the Old Gods when he was having his eyesight burned out - or, at least, as much as Sargeras himself knows. But since Illidan is canonically known to not say _jack shit_ to anyone where it concerns future plans until said plans blow up in his face a'la Black Temple, it remains to be seen as to how much he's aware of beyond the scope of the Legion and the Burning Crusade. Then again, it's not often brought up (from what I can tell) how Illidan's soul is in Helheim prior to the Nighthold campaign as a deal between Gul'dan and Helya, and demons AFAIK do not go to a fixed afterlife like the Shadowlands i.e. they only regenerate in the Twisting Nether regardless of Argus the Unmaker's influence, so not only do the Void/Void Lords/Old Gods have to come into play you have to factor in the Jailer and the Pantheon of Death, too (this is a bit of reaching, but given what little I've seen of SL spoilers on the PTR this is a possibility).
> 
> This was also going to include the massive lore bomb that's present in the in-game book "Enemy Infiltration - Preface" in Revendreth which heavily alludes to the nathrezim stuffing all their hands in the cosmic cookie jar for their own purposes, but by that point the story had been too far along for me to want to overhaul and spend more time on it. Only Illidan's line "Look to the sky, for there are as many eyes around us as there are stars. The sun and the moon cannot always be trusted" remains for What Could Have Been.

“You should not be here.”

Alleria opens her eyes with a start, only for the breath to leave her lungs.

_What in the…?_

This is not her bedroom, where she often retires to, when she isn’t teaching the newest batch of students that have made the painstaking journey across the continent to the secret channels that would lead them to the portal of the Telogrus Rift. Her bedroom is warm, dropping down to cool at night (where her body feels lighter, softer, than the sensation of heat and polarizing magnetism in the sun). There are pictures on her wall: of Elywnn Forest’s rolling grasslands and redwood trees; a stone bridge over the river between the forest and Westfall; a photograph of Turalyon posing with the statue carved in his image outside the city, the edges frayed and the colors faded. There is another, smaller and newer, of him—older, grizzled, scarred—standing next to Arator, tall and whip-lean, in that same spot. They smile at her. She smiles back at them and lets the world fall away, focuses only on them and imagines all the things they can do now that they are together, all the time they have to compensate for all the years lost. She would focus and think, think and focus, shut out the birds and the idle chatter passing from her window, the stamp of hooves as knights march rank and file toward Redridge; for that is all she needs to hear before she leaves the house and assumes her duties, that is everything she could hear and would want to hear.

“How….” She looks around. Azeroth hangs below her, turning slowly in the star-studded darkness. The Eastern Kingdoms are about to slide away from her, while Kalimdor inches closer and closer to the sun. The White Lady and the Blue Child cling together at an interminable distance, almost perfectly aligned. Were it not for their meager light running down its edge, she would have completely missed the sword protruding out of Silithus.

A chain rattles. Then another—harder, metallic. A harsh breath issues. It could have been from how much strain he puts on pulling them. It could have been the heat, long since cooled to embers, that still crackled in his veins, as if it’s the only thing in that ruined husk of a body that gives him life.

Whatever plagues him is moot, for Sargeras smiles all the same. “I told you so, Betrayer. Your efforts were not enough. Ah, what was it you said to me? Oh. That’s right. ‘Life will find a way.’ And look! So it has.” His gaze falls upon her, cold and wicked, almost lecherous in its intensity. “Such a cute little pupa~”

“I didn’t do anything,” Alleria stammers, more to herself than to anyone in particular. “I just. I closed my eyes—”

“I want you to remember this one,” Sargeras continues, pointing a finger at her. “Study her. Know her every detail.” He grins. “You can smell it, can’t you? Even from here, I can taste it: The rot. The decay. It’s so...nauseating.” From his mouth a tongue scorched black slips out and licks stone-hardened lips. “You are a hunter, are you not? I am but one demon; time itself could die, but I can never be enough to slake your thirst. But see you now, there is your prey. Go to her! She will bloom someday. She shall spread her wings and fly, _fly!_ and blot out all the beauty and the color from the stars that ought do shine, and the breath that Azeroth doth breathe.”

“Be quiet,” Illidan growls, and turns his back on him. Sargeras hisses and yanks on the chains again. The Titans do not stir in their chairs. They do not speak, though Alleria feels a sensation of eyes, ancient and full of knowledge and sorrow, weigh down upon her. Her stomach clenches.

He approaches her. His stride is long, every step a purpose, akin to a predator stalking in the thrushes. His wings are folded back, as a bird surveying that he is lord of all that is his land and sky and sea. He is the unstoppable force of darkness and the inevitable future to Turalyon’s immovable object of Light and all that is good and righteous and pure that can be preserved of the past. His eyes are smoldering green beneath the blindfold, and she is drawn to them. She cannot look away.

Fel, the summation of Light and Void.

Fel, the entropic truth that hides among lies.

Illidan stands before her. Towers her and dwarfs her in his shadow. The chill in her blood cools. The voices in her head recoil and hiss at him. His expression is scrutinizing but otherwise detached. Even as a demon, he can’t quite escape the feline stoicism all elves inherently possess.

“You should leave,” he says. “It’s not safe.”

“I must be dreaming,” Alleria replies. “I...I must have fallen asleep.”

“No. It’s real.” He lodges the tip of one warglaive into a seam on the floor and takes her hand in his, all but engulfing it. “I’m real.”

“Then why am I here? This place is sealed for all eternity. No one can leave.”

“Nothing lasts forever.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No one ever knows for certain, Alleria. There is never any guarantee.”

“So then why? What am I doing here? I,” she swallows thickly, “I was only meditating. Like I always do. I think about home. I think about my son. I haven’t thought about anything else since I returned.”

Illidan hums, a low, animal sound in the back of his throat. There is a slight frown upon his lips.

“It is only a matter of time!” Sargeras cries. “Only a matter,” he repeats. “An infection always begins as little more than an insignificant flesh wound. Cut it out, boy! While you still have the chance.”

“This is no mere coincidence,” Illidan tells her. “Your presence alone confirms my suspicions.”

“My presence?” Alleria echoes, and for a brief instance she isn’t at the Seat but at Quel’Danas. Standing before the rim of the Sunwell, illuminated with a magic clearer than she can remember but left her skin tingling with an underlying phantom itch and made the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rise to hackles. Her body ached to move away as much as the voices wheedled her to get a little closer to the Light, to simply reach out and make their sibling remember what it was like to be Dark at the moment of their fall, though the words made no sense to her. She remembers Rommath’s warnings to stop: at first stern like a parent who has scolded his child one too many times to not do something they should know very well is going to hurt them, only to quickly turn into an on-the-edge kind of fear and anxiety as the inevitable happens at the end. Still, the Light was beautiful. Still, the Light endured even in a kingdom that had risen from the ashes of despair and fallen lock-step in line with the madmen that many Azerothian years ago set their forests ablaze and precluded the beginning of the end of the Quel’dorei. Yet their faces were harsh and distrusting, Lor’themar’s and Liadrin’s and Rommath’s (ole stick-up-the-ass Rommath, it was no wonder Kael’thas was so fond of him), and though not as severe the same sentiments were present in the way Thalyssra held herself: rigid and wary, caught between fight or flight but unable to look away from the horror that would immediately sprout from the Sunwell when Alleria reached out, out, toward the Sunwell where the naaru’s core slumbered, where a door would open, a new chapter would begin, she would be _reborn_ \--

She blinks.

She breathes.

Something murmurs in the back of her head. They start to form words.

They _burn_.

Alleria bites the inside of her cheek, and the blood on her tongue quells the frustration that echoes back at her. “What are they?” she asks, glancing around. She focuses on the stillness, ignores the commotion Sargeras makes.

Illidan unfurls his wings to their full length and, as he turns to face him, tilts his head up toward the Titans. “Their power was not enough,” he finishes, quiet enough so only she can hear. Alleria chances a cursory glance at them. They do not move. They do not speak. The weight of eyes grows heavier. “At the very least,” he adds, “you’re more telling than what my guest wishes to divulge.”

Alleria stares at him. “...I don’t understand,” she says hesitantly. “Is the Seat truly about to be compromised?”

“Compromised?” Illidan snorts softly. “My dear, it already has. The Void will come sooner or later. For me and for the Pantheon. But most of all, they will come for _him_. But I am prepared.” He wrenches the warglaive free, flips it around to adjust to his grip, and flexes his arms. Felfire spits and sparks from the runic tattoos etched across his body and cover the long, curved blades. “We must all be prepared, Windrunner. Look to the sky, for there are as many eyes around us as there are stars. The sun and the moon cannot always be trusted. Is that not right, O Dark One?”

A harsh, gurgling snarl tears through the air. Sargeras is on his feet, wrestling against the bonds that hold him fast. Scarlet felfire glows over cracked skin, steam rising from his pores, exuding a cocktail of sulfur and overcooked meat that makes Alleria’s stomach roil at even the slightest whiff. Hatred and frustration twist his face into an ugly, rabid hound thirsting for blood.

Shaking with _fear_.

His chest rises and falls heavily, veins popping up on his arms and neck that look like crystal webs ready to shatter. He pulls, pulls—the chains do not give. He hisses, strains forward as far as he can go, fists clenched, teeth grinding, the rotten egg smell of his power growing more repugnant. He begins to choke.

Alleria’s breath catches, eyes widening.

One massive arm, cracked open to reveal the volcanic fire underneath, reaches out toward her. Fingers outstretched, with sharp nails long enough to tear her in half. Flakes of ash and sediment coat the floor in front of him in a fine shower. Smoke and steam and felfire continue to wash over him in waves.

Her hackles rise again, sussurations of malformed words breaking through the vice crushing her rampant heart in its grasp. Faintly, on the cusp of hearing, scratching softness on the back of her brain.

They harden, get louder with each heartbeat.

_Devour_.

_DEVOUR_.

_THREAT._

_THREAT._

_ELIMINATE._

_ELIMINATE._

_FULFILL._

Alleria takes a step back. Another. A pinprick of pain localizes above her left eye and blooms around the socket down her face. Warmth and cold engulfs her, one side first and then the other, stuffing her head with a fog that blots out the Seat save for the ravaged husk of a Titan falling to one knee, snarling, and his hands floundering powerfully, uselessly at her.

She touches the lower half of the tattoo on her cheek, grinding down on her teeth through the blood throbbing in her ears.

_EAT._

_EAT!_

“Look at her,” Sargeras pants, spittle speckling his lips. “ _Look at her!_ You talk of eyes? Blind the ones at your back, Betrayer! Now! Before it is too late—”

He howls: terrible, wrenching, angry. He collapses the rest of the way to the floor, fingers wrapping around the bicep of his right arm that’s licked with flames and quickly being drenched in blood. Rivulets pool alongside his knees, casting sizzling holes in the metal. The felfires die out along with the steam. Only the fever-light in his gaze smolders, lips marred in an ugly grimace.

The influence grumbles. The heat and the chill of the universe inside her and the hold it has on her brain gradually melts away.

Illidan stands in front of her, body wreathed in a barrier of immolation. His wings flap twice and hold themselves up in the air, leathery tips trembling slightly. One warglaive before him, its edge coated and smoking with blood that runs off it like water.

The other is held behind him, pointed directly at her abdomen.

Words murmur on the edge of hearing: _Fool. Mistake._

_Wasteful._

They let go, the haze lifting. Copper and bile linger on the back of her tongue. Her mouth feels like cotton.

Alleria looks up. She does not move. The tip of the warglaive teases her; she dares not breathe more than she has to. “Illidan…?”

“That,” Illidan warns, “is not for you to decide.”

“Bastard! Conniver! Knave! Do the right thing! For once in your insignificant life, swallow your Light-damn pride and stop the infection from spreading! Save us—!”

Illidan harrumphs and turns away, and the look on the Titan’s face is one of shock and scandalized fury. Then it settles, and there is murder and hatred and the kind of desperation that threatens to dissolve into full-blown panic at any given moment. The entirety of his being vibrates with it.

The sight of him like that makes the world tilt under her feet.

The warglaive at her belly draws away, and Alleria looks to see the blood trickle down her obliques. The wound begins to itch, warm with the touch of dark magic. The Shadow slithers behind her, around her, one corner of her mind to the other, and disappears with a scrape of stars moaning their death knells, soft and rending steel.

She lowers her hand to touch the blood.

“Alleria.”

She looks up. Illidan watches her, the aura extinguished. His wings settle. He holds his warglaives aloft.

The Titans stare.

Neither speak.

“You should go,” Illidan says, after a long moment.

“You should’ve done it,” Alleria says, before she can stop herself. “If not now, then later on—”

“As I’ve said, that is not for me to decide.”

“You saw what just happened.”

“I did.”

“You could’ve stopped me right then and there. You could’ve saved everyone so much trouble.”

“Do you think so little of yourself? Do you truly believe the destiny you have seen is inevitable?”

“I know what I saw.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It feels so real.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Alleria opens her mouth to protest, pauses, closes it, stands down.

They stare at one another. The stars wheel above them, Azeroth turning below. From her periphery Sargeras glances between them, glowering.

Illidan’s face, as ever, is impassive. Even blindfolded, even scarred, even damned, he is steadfast.

It calms her.

“Are you going to be alright?” she asks him.

He smiles, small and wicked. “I have endured ten thousand years beneath the earth in a cell small enough for worms to crawl around in, with only the magic in the barrow dens to sustain me. This is the most space I will probably ever get for all eternity.”

“For now.”

“Yes. For now.”

“When that happens, what will you do?”

“Fight.” Illidan shrugs, nonchalant. “It’s all I have ever done.”

“Have you never imagined a life that didn’t always involve fighting?”

“After everything I have done in, I do not think that is an option worth considering let alone imagine having. I have forsaken all those opportunities for this one mission to succeed above all else, and it has, for the most part, been paid for. But you—you have the High Exarch, your sisters, and your son. You have your own demons you must contend with and lay to rest. It is a battle I have no right to get involved in.”

“But—”

“Do not worry about me, Alleria. When the time comes for the Seat’s defenses to fall away and the Powers That Be move in to claim it, I will not be able to have moments of reprieve like this. I will have a new purpose to live and strive for, just as you will yours. What we hope will only last for an instant will be longer and more grueling than what we desire. Pray for good fortune, if that is your ken, and perhaps, in the future, we will meet again.”

Now it’s Alleria’s turn to offer him a smile of her own, quiet and rueful. “You’re that confident, huh?”

“It would be a shame if I were anything else. But it would be more of a shame if something happened to you before I could see your growth for myself.” He presses his lips together, thoughtful. “Alleria….”

“I know,” she says, with a weary sigh. “I know. Except...Except I don’t know _how.”_

“It should be simple. You have to wake up.”

“Wake up?”

“Focus, Alleria. Think about what matters most. Think about conquering the Void. Think of the good you will bring to Azeroth by showing others what it can do in the right hands.

She nods tentatively. “Yes...Yes, that’s right. That’s why I took up the art in the first place, didn’t I?” She holds her hand out before her, gazes upon the tiny, bloody droplet that’s hanging on by the tip of her middle finger, sheltered within the curve of her nail. “It was all to fight the Burning Legion. And now…now….”

“Now it is yours for the taking,” Illidan finishes for her. “Remember that it was I who created a new Well of Eternity after the demons were driven from Kalimdor long ago, and know that it was I who saw the potential in harnessing a power that could very well spell Azeroth’s doom. For without it, you would have one less recourse to overcome your enemies. One less opportunity to learn from their mistakes and atone for the sins their kin had wrought. Though the world may condemn people like us for sacrificing more than they are comfortable with, it will be that kind of daring that will see them live another day. Carry these thoughts in your mind. Do not listen to the whispers; they do not know what’s best for you. Remember what I told you on the _Vindicaar_. Only then will you able to return to the safety of your home.”

“I suppose it’s as easy as you say it’s going to be—”

“It will be.”

“—but if the Void has brought me here to show that the Seat is vulnerable, what’s to stop them from pulling me back here the moment I open my eyes back to Stormwind? I’m not wrong, am I?”

“No, you are right. There is no guarantee you will ever remain grounded on Azeroth so long as you continue to harbor that much power inside you. But the fear is the point, Alleria; the Void will make an example out of you as their so-called prized puppet and an example out of everyone that refuses to see past the darkness they know little of outside their preconceptions. They know it will be some time yet before they can move in on the Seat; they have to nurture you first to your utmost potential.

“But if what I am told is correct, the Void is just as uncertain as they are certain of the possibilities that can come to pass. Is that not so?”

Alleria stares at him, and behind him, outside of her focus, Sargeras’s expression becomes unreadable. Curiosity or confusion or diffusion from the two, she can’t say.

But the race that gallops suddenly beneath her breastbone does. Her breath sticks, torn between exhalation and inhalation.

Sometimes, there are visions in her meditations, beyond the dreams—or perhaps, more appropriately, nightmares. Names of the eldritch beings drifting through the Great Dark, cancer made incarnate sleeping in the quiet corners of gestating world-souls, waiting for the moment when instinct and hunger wakens them to commit to the design they are programmed. There are tall cliffs and long falls, an endless sea of stars winking out one by one. Golden suns turning black in skies bursting into glass and melting into mercury. She sees herself consuming the weakling wrapped in chains beneath the sea, surrounded by the busts of bronze-cast behemoths cut and sculpted from geometric perfection. His heart is dark and wanting. It rattles in her hands and tastes of rot and splendor on her tongue. The song of the darkened naaru becomes an orchestra, a cacophony, chaos. Everything bleeds together afterwards, some more louder and gruesome than others, but they end all the same:

Enlightened. Free.

_Oh, but that would come at such a cost, now wouldn’t it?_ Locus-Walker would ask her, often asked her during her training. _Indeed, little Alleria:_ _who would you be, in the end?_

Not the wife of Turalyon, son of Lordaeron, who gave her love.

Not the mother of Arator, who is christened by blessing and prayer as Redeemer, who gave her peace.

Not the eldest to Vereesa, who gave her stability.

Not a student (the student?) of Locus-Walker, who gave her power.

But most of all, not a part of the trifecta to Illidan, who gave her…

_Hope,_ a tiny voice, her voice, echoes.

_LIES,_ the Darkness echoes back.

_Ah,_ and the thought loosens her breath and issues it forth.

Alleria smiles again—still no less shy, but a little more lighter. A little more free. “Yes...Yes, you’re right. That’s how it is.”

“Then I believe,” Illidan says, “you know where to go from there.”

“Can it?” she asks him, keeping her voice steady, neutral. Struggling to keep the feelings buried deep from blooming too much, too soon, more than they had to. “Can I really?”

“Only you can decide on that, Alleria. I have walked my path to its appointed end. Now it is your turn to walk upon yours and stay upon the narrow.” Finally, slowly, he shifts and pivots on his heel. “It is past time. Leave this place.”

Alleria gazes at his back, rippling with muscle and sinew and scars lashed across the tattoos that appear too dark and rough to be considered old. Wings flexed, the membranes in-between worn but tough. His blades, catching the stars in their zenith and nadir, winking back at her.

Illidan does not move. His body rises and falls with the slow, rhythmic tandem of his breath.

Ice creeps on the nape of her neck, soft and teasing. Alleria ignores it. She nods to herself, takes in a breath, holds it, lets it go. “Thank you,” she says at last. Then, as steady as she can allow herself, hoping against hope the teary tightness doesn’t show, “Thank you.”

Illidan says nothing.

The Titans watch.

Sargeras grins at him, or her, or the both of them, toothy and filled with cruel, taunting jeer.

Alleria disregards him and focuses on Illidan. He takes one step forward, then another, a third.

Her eyes flutter close, projects his image against the darkness.

“My, my...what is this?” Sargeras asks him, dragging the syllables out like a thread going through the hole in a needle. “Another succulent morsel to project your deluded fantasies onto? I daresay, you are bound to be disappointed...again.”

Illidan scoffs. “Spare me your sanctimony. We have more important matters to discuss.”

“How much do you regret, boy? How much do you think about what you could’ve done with her? _To_ her?”

A song of steel, a burst of fire and the reek of brimstone riding in accompaniment. “Your Legion is broken, and your guests gone to more fulfilling ventures. Talk! Before I have the Shadows make a meal out of you.”

Sargeras guffaws. The chains rattle and unfurl. “Try! _Try_ , with all your might! But they shall have their feast yet, and when they do I will thank you from the bottom of my heart for the wheels you will have set in motion—for Azeroth and your woman. The Darkness will forever know your name. Come! _Come!_ ”

Footsteps quicken, the canvassing clap of spreading wings.

“Wake up.”

Alleria blinks.

Sunlight pours into the bedroom, painting the glass framework on the photographs luminescent smears; dust motes dance in the beams. Conversation flits through the air, fading in and out, rising in crescendo, mingling together. The bells in the Cathedral of Light toll twelve times.

She looks to her left, then to her right. The floorboards creak from one shifting foot to the other.

The doorway leading further into the house is open.

_Home,_ she thinks. _I’m home._

_But for how long?_

She raises her hand again and inspects the drop of blood from where it still rests within the swell of her nail. She stretches her fingers one digit at a time, saving the middle for last, and studies the way it rolls gently over the pad and goes down, down, down, crossing lines with abandon. It caresses her palm, to which she cups, and where it comes to a stop in the very middle as an incomprehensible blotch.

_How long will it be before I’m…._

She bends her fingers, one by one by one, closing them over the palm of her hand. Clenches them together til they’re snug, and grips the hand into a fist. Digs her nails into the meat of her skin, feels the wetness beneath them.

“It doesn’t,” she murmurs. “It _doesn’t_! I have to show him...I have to show everyone…! Even if...if…no.” She loosens her fist and opens up her hand. Smattered, red glazing nonsensically and already beginning to dry in the air. “I don’t want to. I _can’t_. They….”

She closes eyes and fist, presses it to her breastbone.

_They don’t know what is best for_ me.

A brand, resonating beneath the lobes of her ears, as sterile as the prison cell aboard the Vindicaar. Drumming to the tune of heart and blood and pulse. _You will see. We are ever patient._

_We will love you so much more._

“Be _quiet_ ,” she hisses, and lets her hand fall to her side.

She looks down the hall. 

Illidan’s image stands there, superimposed within the gloom. Bright, bright, burning bright. Red, like the star in the sky. Sunspots mingle around him in a technicolor halo.

Alleria blinks, and he is gone.

Far away, the bells in the Cathedral of Light toll twelve times, high noon. A fluttering of wings and chattering as the shadow of starlings fly past the window. Breathing ephemeral, pulse subterranean under her armor.

She inhales. Closes her eyes. Remembers there will be a session later today in the Rift. Remembers that though the scrapes and bruises she acquires afterward are glanced at Turalyon and Arator will still ask fret and worry over her, blood or no blood.

She remembers them.

Remembers her students.

Remembers _him_.

Alleria exhales. Opens her eyes.

She walks out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> So according to the notes on the LibreOffice Writer, the document for this fic was made all the way back on January 7, 2019. I honestly don't have much of a recollection of even starting it up beyond gearing up for Battle of Dazar'alor on both factions, but the idea behind it was pretty clear: Alleria, through no means of her owns, somehow teleports - or occurs a sudden bout of astral projection - into the Seat of the Pantheon, where Illidan and Sargeras are having a rather short respite from their eternal brawl. The Titans are inactive from expending the last of Argus's power as well as their own into harnessing the defensive systems, and though they don't speak they regard Alleria's presence with silent condemnation. I always thought it was a strange premise, since the original intention was to leave Alleria's sudden appearance more ambiguous (and make the idea that the Void _did not_ bring her there all the more horrific).
> 
> But that has since evolved: mentions of the Nightborne scenario were included, as well as expanding on Alleria and Illidan's interaction; Sargeras was an afterthought, but he certainly moseyed his role in further with the brief scene of body horror and desperation. I had toyed with the idea of ending the story just as Alleria wakes up/reappears in Stormwind, based off the U.S. version of _Vanilla Sky_ , but it was but a passing thought. Although I did like interpreting the Void as a bit more 'robotic', programmed for only two things: chaos and hunger in entropy.


End file.
